Category Archives: centre-periphery relations

September 11, 2025 · 12:34 am

Sri Lanka ‘Besieged’ by Foreign ‘Settler Tourism’

Dr Asoka Bandarage, in The Island, 5 September 2025 where the title reeads, “Sri Lanka: The beautiful, besieged island”

“Israelis are coming to Sri Lanka, and they’ve done what they do best — taking over the place. They’ve occupied it and made it feel like Tel Aviv. They host parties advertised as ‘no locals allowed.’ The Israelis have come to Arugam Bay, throwing raves and refusing to let Sri Lankan people attend.”

In July 2025, the influential global travel website Big 7 named Sri Lanka the “most beautiful island in the world,” stating that the “teardrop-shaped island off the southern coast of India has it all—golden beaches, terraced tea plantations, timeworn temples, colonial towns, misty mountains, and wildlife safaris … elephants and leopards.”

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, racism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, taking the piss, tourism, travelogue, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, world events & processes

September 10, 2025 · 11:42 pm

A Zealot in USA targets Sri Lanka

Rohana R. Wasala, in The Island, 10 September 2025, with this title “The root of all evil”

Professor Michael K. Jerryson of Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA,  testified on the subject of ‘Human Rights Concerns in Sri Lanka’ before the ‘Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, House Committee on Foreign Affairs (of the U.S. House of Representatives) on June 20, 2018. While delivering his statement, Jerryson submitted a written testimony into the record. He thanked Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and other Members of the Committee  for ‘addressing a very important issue facing Sri Lanka, which is also a larger issue of peace and stability for South and South Asia today’

A file photo of a US House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting …. graced this item but refused  to comply with  Thuppahi’s ‘request’

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, american imperialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, democratic measures, disparagement, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian religions, life stories, LTTE, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, racist thinking, religiosity, religious nationalism, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, Sri Lankan scoiety, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes

September 10, 2025 · 4:19 pm

East & West: Cross-fertilisation in Sri Lanka, 1940s et seq

Michael Roberts

An EMAIL Exchange with Vinod Moonesinghe recently prompted me to search for relevant literature and I came across this text from my hand in People Inbetween (1989, Sarasavi Publications, page 111).

“In brief, in the 1900s and 1910s the literati who engaged themselves in English drama developed no synthesizing link with the Sinhala theatre which was flourishing at the same time in and around the Tower Hall in Maradana, Colombo. The latter, as we know, had some awareness of the Western theatrical traditions [81]. Our speculative point is that the fertilizing influence, such as it was, moved in one direction only.      Pathiraja

 Sarathchandra 

Ludo
 Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, hatan kavi, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, teaching profession, theatre world, unusual people, world events & processes

September 9, 2025 · 12:05 pm

The Three Amigos at the World’s Peak

Simon Gully

 

Leave a comment

Filed under authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, disparagement, governance, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, military strategy, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry

September 8, 2025 · 2:05 am

AKD: ‘Palm Leaves’ For Tamils & Jaffna

Rajan Philips in    7 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Crowded agenda includes Cricket but no visit to Chemmani”  … wth highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The President goes to Jaffna! ... President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made yet another visit to Jaffna last week. With all good intentions, he may be on course to set a record for visiting Jaffna more times than all his predecessors combined. There is no Lyn Ludowyk among us to make a political satire of presidents going to Jaffna, reversing the time honoured old trope – “He Comes from Jaffna!”.

Foundation for Cricket Stadium

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, legal issues, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, reconciliation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, Sri Lankan cricket, transport and communications, unusual people, world events & processes

September 7, 2025 · 10:05 pm

Ramifications From Past Killings in Sri Lanka … Burgeoning Issues

Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu 1 September 2025, where the title runs thus: “Decades Later A Difficult Story Finds Its Way to the Sinhala South” … with highlights  being  the work of The Editor, Thuppahi

Forensic experts has been unearthing human remains from a mass grave in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka. The number of skeletons retrieved has now crossed 200, including some of children.

The grave site and the mounting toll of human remains found in it dominate daily headlines in the country’s Tamil media, while receiving little attention in the country’s mainstream English and Sinhala media. In response to this gnawing gap, three young journalists decided they must tell the story to the majority community, Sinhala-speakers. Wasting no time, they pooled resources and made multiple reporting trips and conducted several interviews with locals and experts over the last few months to write Chemmani, a Sinhala-language book on the mass grave site in the locality, believed to contain the remains of Tamil civilians, and dating back to the mid-1990s, shortly after the Sri Lanka military captured Jaffna.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, ethnicity, historical interpretation, human rights, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes

September 7, 2025 · 2:57 pm

Indigenous ‘Touches’ within the British Colonial Era of Capitalist Expansion

Vinod Moonesinghe, IN  Factum Perspectives March 3, 2025, where the title runs thus: “Tindals, Dhonis, and Sampans – The interconnectedness of historical Indian Ocean commerce” ….  NB: the two photos &  the map are insertions by The Editor, Thuppahi

 In the days of the British Raj, bullock carts were used to transport goods inland and to bring coffee beans (and later tea) from the montane plantations down to Colombo, for shipment overseas.

The distance from the coffee plantations to the main seaport of Galle caused the colonial government to override the wishes of the British Admiralty and of the steamship lines (who all wished to operate from Galle, which was closer to the main sea route to the Orient) and to develop Colombo harbour at a considerable cost.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, export issues, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, plantations, sri lankan society, transport and communications, unusual people, working class conditions

September 6, 2025 · 12:52 am

Two Reviews in 2010 of Copeman’s Book on Blood Donations in India

https://sacrificialdevotionnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/jacob-copeman_veins-of-devotion/

 ONE …. REVIEW OF Jacob Copeman: Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009, 233 pp)………….by Ron Barrett of Macalester College …. Taken from the American Ethnologist May 2010, vol. 37/2, pp. 380-81.

Recent years have seen an emerging literature on the sociopolitical dynamics of human tissue exchange. Most of these studies are of a critical nature, focusing on the exploitative aspects of organ trade and other high-profile controversies. Yet few studies have closely examined the apparently mundane forms of biological exchange and the remarkable contexts in which these everyday activities can occur. Jacob Copeman addresses this important gap with Veins of Devotion, a well-researched ethnography about the contributions of several North Indian devotional movements to voluntary blood donation campaigns. Critical in the classical sense, this volume traces the flows of blood, spirit, and power through expanding domains of kinship, asceticism, nationalism, purification, and gift exchange in the urban heart of neoliberal India.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, medical puzzles, psychological urges, religiosity, self-reflexivity, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes

September 5, 2025 · 1:04 pm

Mahbubani’s Insightful Reading of Today’s World Order

Watch    https://youtu.be/0HsAtrd8bNE?si=nUjZVm05W-67JStS

This is the lecture Australians should listen too, not the psychotic rubbish that the army of elite propaganda journalists publish each day in Australian newspapers and on TV.  The lecture was given in Hong Kong. The speaker is the well known former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani who examines the changes taking place in the world today, and the implications from it.
He says “geopolitics is the most cruel game in the world”. Being a nice country is not enough. You need to be shrewd and cunning if you are going to survive.  He affirms that “we live in amazing times of amazing changes around the world, and that we have an obligation to keep up with the changes and learn how to adapt to it.”

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, democratic measures, economic processes, education, ethnicity, historical interpretation, modernity & modernization, Pacific Ocean issues, Pacific Ocean politics, politIcal discourse, power politics, transport and communications, world affairs, world events & processes

September 4, 2025 · 2:04 pm

Ranil Wickremasinghe’s Arrest placed in Broad Context

Brigadier Ranjan de Silva, whose preferred title is “The Arrest of Ranil Wickremasinghe, Democracy and the Rule of Law ” … with highlights at end in black being those of the Author; while the other colours are impositions by Te Editor, Thuppahi

 Upholding accountability: Democracy is often hailed as a system of government where the rule of law prevails over the rule of individuals. One of its most defining features is the principle that no one is above the law – not even the highest executive authority.
In recent decades, several democratic countries  have  demonstrated this commitment by arresting or prosecuting former heads of state for crimes ranging from corruption to abuse of power. These cases, while politically charged, underscore the resilience of democratic institutions and the importance of legal accountability.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, democratic measures, electoral structures, governance, legal issues, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, sri lankan society, vengeance, world events & processes